Why Haven't They Made This?

There are those games that ruin your life, but you love them for doing it. Greg Tito relates one of those personal experiences, how creating a future history in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was more satisfying than writing his own.

Back in 2002, Introversion launched Uplink, a cyberpunk sleeper hit based on computer hacking. Joe Blancato reveals his dream, that someday this revered single-player experience be brought to life in the massively multiplayer arena.

Sequel after sequel, games continually increase in their complexity until their conventions are so arcane that only a longtime player can understand them. John Tynes looks at why this increasing complexity is a bad thing in this edition of The Contrarian.

In 1993, Interplay released BARIS, a space race simulation with incredible detail. Since that time, serious space exploration games have all but vanished. Allen Varney looks at why Race Into Space went to the Moon and then to oblivion.